While many recent news stories have caught my interest, I don’t feel as if I posses adequate time in doing them justice.

Pictured: What an average reader may have looked like after reading that last sentence.

The EA online pass thing has been a long time coming, I feel. With my recent observations that failure is an option, EA no loner needs to fail with such consistency, they just need to fail in the right ways. Micro-transactions and subscription based programs may gain them more finance in the long run, and might cut down on the hate they contend with on a frequent basis.

Pictured: What an average gamer might have looked like after originally hearing about EA’s Online Pass program.

In regards to the Nintendo story, I’m always in shock and awe when any company shuts down positive promotion for their own product. There are a few financial aspects to look at here, as this basically boils down to free advertising, something larger companies have to pay quite a bit of money in creating. Further, you can’t buy bad press away, and it’s something far more costly to deal with in the long run, than the amount of potential buyers you’ll turn off. All of this, by pissing directly onto your demographic, which equates to abusing a few passionate fans creatively expressing their love of your product.

I can only imagine what some of those Youtube content creators must have looked like, after receiving the news their Nintendo videos were shut down by Nintendo.

Pictured: An average Youtube user, after receiving the news Nintendo shut down their Nintendo videos.

The only words of wisdom I can express here are as follows: just because something is legal, doesn’t mean that it’s right. Nintendo may have some grand plan or hidden agenda that doesn’t just involve trivial amounts of money, but they’re going about it the wrong way. I remember when the biggest Rare fan site on the net, for example, got shut down for trying to make a documentary about how awesome Rare as a company is. The reason for the shut down? The doc was just a little disagreeable about Rare’s future, but more than happy to have been a part of their past.

So yeah, Rare was within legal means to shut down the fan site, effectively destroying it’s largest core collective of followers, in a time where they had very few to brag about.

What did it accomplish? Rare finally revealed itself to it’s fans what it really was.